An ode
to mythical miracle:
Eleven years this week,
my forty-eight-year-old body
buckled under eleven pounds of
babies and sixteen-point-three-two
liters of amniotic fluids – fluids filling
my fingers with brine, my legs with oceans,
the three of us going under to the roar of the
riptide rushing protein through my veins while
whitecaps frothed at the surface, stippling my sight in
the sequins and certainty of preeclampsia and premature
births. It’s time. the docs proclaimed, even though it wasn’t,
wasn’t, wasn’t time. We still had six weeks to go. The boys and
I weren’t ready. But ready or not we got swallowed up in a wailing
ambulance sailing up I-75 in a 180-degree, magnesium-fueled fever
dream of worry and fear. All that prep work and all those prayers from
the past thirty-four weeks, the prescriptions and needles, the hormones
and protein shakes, ice packs and ultrasounds, body pillows and bedrests
hanging like flotsam in the balance: seizures, strokes or worse on one side
and babes with wet tissue lungs on the other. And I the faulty fulcrum, no
way of knowing which way that I’d tip before the cold scalpel’s tip could
untimely rip my battered mermaid’s purse and
pull
our
boys
free
from
the
danger
of
me.
I saw our family’s matriarch this week.
Spent a night and afternoon bathed in her love.
Watched as she delivered candy heart grapes
and chocolate chip cookies to attendants
where her husband now resides –my uncle,
but no more like my uncle than I am
to Hercules, so bent and gnarled is he,
a Joshua Tree inside the endless
pale expanse of his nursing home walls.
We signed the guest book where her name repeats
uninterrupted and boundless in the
otherwise bare pages, her Palmer-Method
perfect loops and whorls as precise as the
fingerprint of her love on him, on me,
on all blessed to call her kin and more than kind.
Hearts as good
as grits and gravy,
passions that run
like over-easy eggs,
my first block class
of seniors
is a heaping helping
of Heaven Help
with a whole lotta
Gotta love ‘em
thrown in too.
Scattered, smothered,
and covered up –
that’s what they keep me –
along with on my toes
and on my No’s,
but oh-so-many
Yes-es, too.
We should all be
this way, their way,
full of pushing ourselves
and our limits,
pouring our magic
into this, our magic hour
in this wild and precious world.
We should all be grabbing our minutes
by the forkfuls, the spoonfuls, the plate and bowl and platterfuls,
with hearts as good as grits and gravy, passions spilling off the edges
like
over-easy
eggs.
Before the grit
and grave
overtake us all.
for honeyed light,
and fuzzy blossoms,
warmer breezes,
brighter days
daffodil and
cricket whispers
Mary Oliver
songs of praise.
calmer seasons,
softer reasons,
searching, finding
helping ways,
words of wisdom,
sanguine answers,
Barbara Kingsolver
takeaways.
calm reserves
and ample courage,
understanding
of the mess,
fortitude
to band together,
Margaret Atwood
cleverness.
Mary Shelley’s
flip the monster,
Virginia Woolf’s
collective views,
Madeline Miller’s
new perspective,
Alice Walker’s
use the bruise.
Perkins Gilman’s
righteous anger,
Angelou’s
escape the cage,
Angela Carter’s
dark and twisty,
Hansberry’s
take center stage.
Women Writers
came before us,
Women Writers
writing still.
may we read them,
may we be them,
grab our quills,
exert free will.
do some damage.
wreak some carnage.
sound the gongs,
and right the wrongs.
strong solutions
and ablutions,
lead the way
to brighter days.
I’m oh-so-done with the darkness and gloom
so ready to disregard heralds of doom
for greener pastures, sweeter natures
softer scenes and lesser dangers.
But can I, should I, turn away,
pretend it’s not happening every day —
the fabric and flesh of American dreams
aren’t being gutted, torn loose at the seams?
So much vicious carnage, fresh blood every day,
pooling, congealing, while most look away.
I gawk and claw and scream at the trends,
try to wake neighbors, coworkers and friends;
but so few are listening, so lost in their role:
red-blooded Americans losing their soul
to their man and his crony who’s bleeding them dry
of things they would normally never abide:
like liberty, bank accounts, morals, good sense
how long will they sit and forget self defense —
(that right they hang hats on
campaigns on,
their money and more).
How long ‘til it becomes
an ironical right that
the blindly-following right
have hanged themselves —
and every last one of us –
on?
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds roving.
Again.
Every day
for the last 20-something,
they’ve picked at anything
trying to wriggle a little life
out of this cold planet —
their raucous beaks slicing
as if the world is on fire,
when in reality,
there’s no way.
It’s blueblack cold and cracked here,
with frosty hearts on full display.
I wanted to say hearts unfrosted, but that would have been wrong.
The White House Valentine, with its chronic anger and bulbous, floating heads, proves that sentiment wrong.
Oh, also sentiment is wrong.
Inefficient. Fraudulent.
Surely a liberal initiative and thus dismantled completely by dodgy, draconian beaks as too woke.
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds.
We three wore comfortable shoes
and smiles on our cheeks
while chasing windswept leaves,
chocolate croissants,
and all the sights we could see:
the coyly smiling diva beneath her pyramid,
the Grande Dame in her scaffolding,
the famed tower on the Seine,
the tree lined boulevards,
marble-mouthed accents,
cigarette smoke and accordion chords,
the hushed blend of crepe trousers,
bicycle spokes, and Shakespeare and Company crowds.
The harsh scrape of blisters
and bistro chairs
clustered like the grapes
pressed and poured into glass balloons
poised near berried lips
as perfumed hands snapped selfies
beneath silk flowered awnings,
ribbon-braided balconies,
and stone so creamy you ached for a spoon.
All elegant and expected
and somehow, so not –
like the massive teddy bear
tucked in the crotch of a tree
and the painted elf carousel
at the street corner in Montmarte,
and all the memories that spilled
like sepia-toned love notes
from my daughters
when I spotted a stuffed bear
in the corner of my son’s closet
this Valentine’s week.
It’s February, and a finch couple
flits from branch to branch
between waxy camellia leaves,
plucking at blossoms, at twigs.
It’s early yet to feather a nest,
so maybe they’re searching for
aphids, simply sustaining
themselves in this long winter.
I, too, need sustaining
in this long, bleak winter
and turn to poetry to search
for truth, diversion, comfort,
calm, as entire branches of
our great nation are stripped
of softness. Too riddled,
we’re told, with corruption.
And while pruning keeps things
healthy, this is far from healthy —
all decency peeled and hacked
to feed and feather already
substantial nests.
And I am at a loss which way to lean
with my poems in this storm. To settle
in and steel myself against the cold
currents left after caring and kindness,
inclusion and liberty and justice for all
are gone. To write of soft feathered things
staying the course, perching in the soul,
and singing loudly for all to hear?
Or to steel myself with implements of war?
To load my poems with brimstone and
fire, flashes of anger, to sound the alarm,
to blast the eye and ear of friends,
neighbors, countrymen.
And whichever way I go… will anyone
listen? Will anyone care? As they
don’t seem to care anymore anyway.
Children who are in my classroom to learn. Children who are in my classroom because their parents love them dearly. Children whose parents want the best for them.
I learn so much about who they are, where they come from, how they’re raised, what their dreams are, who they love. They write their stories. And boy, do some of them have stories to tell.
Stories of fear. Of poverty. Of attempted kidnappings. Of actual kidnappings. Of violence. Of arduous journeys. Of near starvation. Of cold nights. Meager possessions. Endless red tape. Parents left behind. Siblings left behind. Sadness and struggles. Heartache and love. Family and sacrifice. Hardwork and gratitude, perseverance and pride.
In my classroom we share voices and dreams and experiences and connections and empathy and understanding.
From these children’s stories I’ve learned so much about what bravery and love really look like.
We share our most precious parts of us and we become family. And I will continue to do my best to keep my classroom a safe place.
But as I read these articles and see the footage about ICE showing up at schools, my blood boils and runs cold all at the same time. Because while I’ve done my best to keep my classroom a safe place to learn and grow, we already know schools can be far from safe. Gun violence is a real threat.
And now, so is government-sanctioned trauma.
Teachers go into this job because we love children. All children. And when they hurt, we hurt.
Dear God, please be with these children and their aching, breaking hearts. And please, dear God, keep these children safe.
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